Now let's talk about a story that's being told on an old, non-digital platform, also known as a stage. About 20 years ago, a Texas car dealership started a competition: contestants had to keep one hand on a brand new fully loaded truck as long as they could. The last person standing got to keep it. This competition was the subject of an award-winning documentary in 1997.

And as NPR's Neda Ulaby reports, it is now the basis of a musical.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: It's called "Hands On A Hardbody." The hardbody is the truck. At a rehearsal at the La Jolla Playhouse in California, it's on casters so the actors can spin it around the stage.

NEIL PEPE: We're going clockwise 180 to 730.

ULABY: Tony award wining director Neil Pepe is more accustomed to interpreting the dramas of David Mamet or Harold Pinter.

PEPE: Its such an odd challenge as a director, to have this, you know, truck sitting in the middle of a stage.

ULABY: Check out the musical's creators. The composer is Trey Anastasio of the band Phish. Benjamin Millepied is the choreographer. He's the former New York City Ballet star who also choreographed the movie "Black Swan." The script is by Doug Wright who won a Pulitzer for his play, "I Am My Own Wife," a few years ago.

DOUG WRIGHT: When I first started to talk about the musical to friends and colleagues, they said, Oh, that's an inherently flawed idea - it's a bunch of people standing still for hours on end.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "HANDS ON A HARD BODY")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: And they'll stand there as long as they can and the last one remaining wins that beautiful truck.

ULABY: The documentary "Hands On A Hard Body" focuses on people desperate for a truck or for money.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "HANDS ON A HARD BODY")

KELLY MANGRUM: That's the first thing I'd do is sell the truck. I have so many bills to pay off. I have a car. I want to go back to school.

ULABY: Kelly Mangrum, in the documentary, has a different story in the musical. She starts a romance with the young guy whose hands are on the truck right next to her.

ULABY: They fantasize about winning the truck and getting out of Texas together.

(SOUNDBITE OF A SONG)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN AND WOMAN: (Singing) Like a shooting star once it streak across the summer, sky fireworks on the fifth of July, the dandelion you blew a wish upon...

TREY ANASTASIO: All the musical ideas in the story came from the characters themselves.

ULABY: Trey Anastasio, of the band Phish, tuned into a Southern symphony of country, rock, blues, and gospel to compose the musical. One contestant in the documentary listens to religious music to keep going and lapses into states of ecstasy.

ULABY: At this point in the contest, bodies are numb and the contestants are sleepless, disoriented and vulnerable. Norma Valverde's sense of divine connection is, if briefly, catching.

(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "HANDS ON A HARDBODY")

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (as Norma Valverde) (Singing) I feel the joy...

ULABY: In this song, the truck itself becomes an instrument.

(SOUNDBITE OF BANGING)

ULABY: Playwright Doug Wright and his collaborator Amanda Green hired a private detective to find the original contestants, including that woman so transported by religion.

WRIGHT: Norma Valverde is living in the Houston area now. Her kids are all proudly off to college, which is a first for her family.

ULABY: Wright and Green asked for permission from every real person they turned into a character. And they offered them a financial stake in the show, if it makes any money.

WRIGHT: Because when you're writing a piece that deals with certain issues of economic exploitation, the last thing you want to do is to be accused of it.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

ULABY: For Wright, making this contest into a musical was a way to bring lower income American voices in front of affluent theater audiences.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "HANDS ON A HARD BODY")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #4: I can't do it. I got pins in this knee.

ULABY: The contestants in the documentary are woefully unprepared for the grueling effort of standing for days.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "HANDS ON A HARD BODY")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #5: Russell is out here in boots. What? You can't do this thing in boots. You...

ULABY: The contest's intense physical demands resonated for choreographer Benjamin Millepied. He insists it was not a challenge to create dances for people just standing around a truck. He says he was struck by the contestants' trancelike swaying in the documentary as the contest dragged on and on.

BENJAMIN MILLEPIED: Moving, keeping some type of movement as you get the exhaustion to, you know, keep you awake and also to keep your blood moving, and moving from one feet to the other.

ULABY: One contestant in the movie and musical who seems likely to win is a young Marine. In this version he's traumatized by his experience in combat.

(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "HANDS ON A HARDBODY")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #6: (Singing) And I kept on growing stronger than I was the day before. Stronger like you have to be in war. I know what the future holds in store...

ULABY: The contest exposes contestants' strengths and frailties as they cling to a shiny symbol of power and mobility. It's summed up in the documentary by a man named Benny Perkins.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "HANDS ON A HARD BODY")

BENNY PERKINS: You know, it's a human drama thing. And it's more than just a contest. And its more than just winning the truck.

ULABY: And maybe "Hands On A Hardbody" is not so different from a musical, say, about a chorus line. It's about the same things: competition, hard work, tenacity.

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